Stillness, And Yet
by Annie D
Summary: Ficlet. Haruko finds out that Rukawa's found someone else. It's Haruko-centric, so the yaoi-ness is all off-screen. And yes, I know it's been done a million and one times before.


**Fandom**: Slam Dunk   
**Warnings**: Girly angst, a glimmer of yaoi in the background.   
**Rating**: G   
**Disclaimer**: Bla bla bla not mine bla bla bla.   
**Summary**: Haruko finds out via Ayako that Rukawa has found someone else. 

  


**Stillness, And Yet**

by Annie D 

  


Suddenly, it all becomes so clear. 

Haruko stands, delicate fingers pressed to her cheeks in a futile attempt to hold back what's inevitable. Her shoulders shake in almost imperceptible shudders, and soon she is dizzy. Too dizzy to stand, too dizzy to think, too dizzy to cry. 

Well. Almost. 

She feels cold. The coldness curls from deep in her gut, easing outward, making her shake until she cannot breathe. She opens her mouth, perhaps to speak, but even _she_ knows that there's nothing to be said. 

Ayako tries to look understanding, but she is scared. A hand reaches out to touch, but Haruko wobbles back, suddenly allergic to human contact. 

She thinks that perhaps it is time for her knees to give way, and they finally do, allowing her a soft descent onto the grass. Her mother would chide her for ruining her new skirt, but that would be later, and she doesn't care for later. 

In the now, she feels the shock. It has to be shock, because she cannot feel the pain, and there should be pain. 

Ayako is speaking, but Haruko cannot hear. She cannot hear anything beyond the roar of her heart which thunders in her ears. 

_Burn! _

Her world, its centre once so sure, is now a whirlwind of the unnameable. It couldn't have been just a crush, because a crush wouldn't affect her so. Perhaps it once was a crush, but it evolved into something, the core of her universe, the focal point of her tiny insignificant existence. A petty thing to revolve around, but such always are the fancies of a young girl. 

Ayako is holding her now, and she has given up trying to pull away. It just takes too much energy, which she seems to have very little of now. 

Behind her eyelids, the coldness pulls away, to be filled with something else. 

_Betrayal!_

Her heart screams its truth. She had put her trust in him, the one who had claimed to be her friend, the one she had trusted with her most fragile of secrets. The greatest of trust given, the greatest of lies received. 

It shatters within her, the realisation of how a fool she is. 

Haruko pulls away from the hug, wanting her personal space to be her own as she comes to grips with the newest emotion. 

She tries to hate, and it comes easily. She feels it tingling at her fingertips, and for a moment she holds the anger of a god. 

Let the punishment fit the crime. 

She believes it, for all of a second. But then that, too, loses its strength, because it is not who she is. 

A fragile heart, under it all. Trusting, and loving, and capable of more forgiveness than is probably healthy. She does not have the power to hold the wrath, and lets it go easily. She deflates with its loss, and falls into the hug with Ayako once again. 

The words are softer now, as Ayako whispers in her ear. And she at least now can make out a few words in between here and there. 

"…sorry… they didn't… had to know… didn't mean… not hurt you…" 

Haruko is numb, and thinks that she could lie in the stillness of Ayako's arms until morning without missing a beat. 

_Broken…_

No longer having the shock or the anger to hold her, Haruko feels herself falling. She knows she is stupid, now more than ever, and it makes her nauseous. 

A simple crush shouldn't affect her so. A simple friendship shouldn't, either. 

It is not so simple, she comes to realise. It is deeper. She cannot find the words, but she has never been good with words. It is deep, and complex, and things that her simple mind cannot wrap around, because that is who she is. 

She lives by what she sees, and what she feels. And now she sees… she has been blind. 

The memories make more sense now, as seen with what new sight she has been given. The truth is more obvious. What was there all the time, she refused to see, because it did not fit into the rules of her world. 

But the world she built for herself is not the world _they_ chose to live in. 

Ah. 

Suddenly, it is all so clear. 

FIN 


End file.
